


A normal day

by BlackPrism



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Beaches, Bonding, Day At The Beach, Domestic Fluff, Family, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff, Friendship, Platonic Relationships, Post KH 3, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 05:33:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17616452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackPrism/pseuds/BlackPrism
Summary: After all the things that happened, a normal life was really everything they wanted.(Some slight KH 3 spoilers)





	A normal day

**Author's Note:**

> I had too many feelings and this happened

Axel woke up to a few pesky rays of sun, which had managed to sneak through a small crack in the curtains and hit him right in the eyes. He opened his eyes with a small grunt of annoyance, looking straight up at the ceiling, and the messily scrawled ‘Axel was here’, decorating about half of it.

And like every morning, it made him grin.

 

He had stuck with the name Axel. It hadn’t been too much of a decision, really. Most of his friends knew him by that name, and Lea..well, Lea was more like a long lost brother, a him from another life who had started the strange journey that had brought Axel to where he was now, but not actually gone along for the ride.

And honestly, Axel was fine with that. Axel had been the one to make the many mistakes in his life. And Axel had also been the one to atone for them. It only seemed fair that Axel would also be the one who would live in the world he had helped shape.

 

Rolling over on his stomach, Axel let one of his hands hang off of his bed, burying his face half in his pillow, half in his mattress. He really wasn’t one to get up early, and no matter what time it was, it was too early to get up. Blinking with the one eye that wasn’t covered by fabric, Axel took a look around his room. It was cluttered and small, already messy, even though they all had moved into the small flat only about six months, maybe six months and a half ago. But he liked it that way. He liked having things to leave lying around, to have a place to leave them lying around in. He hadn’t had a home, actual..belongings, for years, no need for them, no real wish to have any, no real wish for..anything. No feelings, no nothing. 

But then he had found friends, had become a somebody again, a living person, a human with a heart. And now, here he was, in the smallest of the three rooms, in the flat that he shared with Roxas and Xion. Axel smirked. They all didn’t have anything, two of them only hearts for a long time, the third training to wield a keyblade, and the little bit of money they got as a kind of starting fund wasn’t really enough for anything fancy, just enough to get started, to have a roof over their head and food on the table.

So they moved together, sharing a flat with a small, cramped kitchen and a mouldy bathroom with a constantly dripping faucet.

And even if they had had the fund to all get their own place, no way in hell was Axel letting these two children wander through life by themselves. Hell, they deserved to have somebody be there when they came back from school, after all the shit they had been through. They also deserved somebody who kicked their ass in the general direction of the school, because Axel knew both of them, especially Roxas, and he knew that there would be a lot of skipping school involved if they were left to their own devices.

Not that it was that much less skipping school with Axel involved, but hey, he had never been the responsible or strict kind, so if there was a new movie in the cinemas, or a cool, new attraction in town, who was he to stop the two from sneaking off to see it.

 

Axel pushed himself up on his elbows, scowling slightly at the strands of hair that immediately slid into his face, poked him in the eyes and tickled his nose, trying to blow them away to no avail. He may have changed out of that damn, leathery cloak, but no way was he getting a haircut.

The change of clothes had mostly been to avoid any strange stares, he really didn’t want to seem like a creepy dude with a leather-fetish, especially not on the few days that he picked Roxas and Xion up from school, so they could go to the beach or get some ice cream.

But for some part, something that Axel wouldn’t admit to anyone, he had finally got some normal clothes, changed out of the organization's cloak, because he finally had a real...reason to.

After getting a heart it was just a run against the clock, trying to master the keyblade before time ran out, no reason to actually...find himself, construct a life out of nothing, if there might be no future he could live that life in. And then, when everything was over, he threw away the cloak without a second look. That had been no life. That had taken years of life from him. And he wanted nothing to do with it any longer. 

He still stuck with mostly black clothes. What could he say, he looked extremely handsome in dark fabric, especially if it was form fitting. But he avoided anything leathery or thick. He had sweated in that fucking coat for years, it was time his arms and legs touched some air again, saw some sun. His limbs were even paler than his face, and not in a pretty way. More in a ‘I have been locked in a dark basement for 30 years’ kind of way.

 

Finally pushing himself into a sitting position, Axel grimaced as his feet touched the cold, wooden floor, stretching one of his legs to pull the ragged, small rug lying in the middle of the room, closer to him.

The whole room was kind of ragged, not only the rug. The small desk was made out of old, chipped wood, scratches decorating it on all sides. Most of the pens on it were freebies, all of which Axel had grabbed of when he had spotted them, some having been handed out at the supermarket or at a booth that sold newspaper subscriptions. The chair was in the same state as the desk, the cushioned part full of holes and smelling like wet dog. Not that Axel had smelled it on purpose. Well...alright, he had. But that wasn’t the point. 

The rug was supposed to look like a sheepskin with wool, made out of polyester, the fluff having clumped together and turned grey with time, even melted to hard pieces of plastic in some spots. The slim shelf, Axel had barely been able to fit into his room, held a few books, some DVD’s, but mostly various knickknack he had found here and there. Figures, snowglobes, weird things Axel didn’t even know the purpose of. Some might have called what he did hoarding, he called it making up for years of not having cool shit to stare at.

The bed he was sitting on was also wood, also old, ductaped in a few places and was missing a few of the planks that held the mattress. But it was sturdy and smelled of pine, and the mattress was lumpy but soft, so it was so much better then the hard, cold bed Axel had had in the organization. And definitely better than sleeping on the floor.

 

Axel turned his head, sleepy eyes looking at his door as he heard another one open and close, feet padding down the short hallway and into the bathroom. 

 

“Really? I woke up first?” Axel muttered with a snort. “That never happened before.”

 

Which was a bit of a lie, really. He had woken up in the middle of the night before, nightmares of all that damn shit, all that damn loss, pain, all the fights and deaths catching up with him, finally, now that everything had settled down as they had with all the others. He had heard screams from Roxas’ room, sobs from Xion’s, and the two had heard whatever embarrassing sounds his dreams wrang out of him. But they had each other's backs, reminding the other that it was safe, that it was over, that they all were there and alive. And that was that. they probably should get some outside help at some point, maybe talk with somebody about all of that shit. But they had just started to live, started to figure out the hows, wheres and whats. Things like that seemed more like the advanced level kind of stuff, and they were still stuck on the beginner level.

But it was fine, really. They talked to each other when they needed to, talked to their other friends, distracted themselves with the new things they had in their life whenever things got too much to just be.

And most of the days were..good. Actually really fucking good.

Roxas and Xion went to school, made friends there. Some days they spend with Axel, some just together, separated and with their own group of friends.

Axel still smiled when he thought of the day, only a few weeks ago, when one of Roxas friends had asked the boy if Axel was his older brother, and Roxas had just shrugged and nodded. That’s how Axel had become a brother, something he had never expected, more then he had ever wished for. 

And Axel himself, well he had found a job. Nothing fancy, just something normal, something small to give them all something to live from. 

 

Another door opened and closed, another pair of feet walking through the hallway and knocking on the bathroom door. Slightly muffled words, a door opening, a door closing, feet padding into the kitchen. Axel yawned and stretched himself, pushing himself off of the bed and dragging his feet towards the kitchen himself.

Roxas was already chewing a piece of toast - they all hadn’t quite figured cooking out yet, especially Axel who burned everything he tried to make - mumbling a ‘good morning’ trough a full mouth. 

 

“Swallow before you choke, or something,” Axel yawned in return, grabbing a piece of toast himself and grilling it with his own fire instead of the toaster. What? It tasted better that way. To him at least.

Falling onto one of the three chairs, Axel started smearing butter on his slice, his eyelids still dropping slightly from time to time. He really liked to sleep long, and it showed when he didn’t.

 

“Ready for some beach time, kid?” Axel asked, smirking as Roxas choked on his toast. It always rubbed both of them the wrong way when he called them ‘kid’ or even worse ‘kiddo’, and Axel relished in each, annoyed glare he received in return. 

 

“Stop that, you sound like some middle-aged dad,” Roxas choked out, still fighting to switch the bread in his lungs for much needed air.

 

“Fuck, imagine me as a middle-aged dude,” Axel snorted, biting the corner of his slice. “Playin’ golf or whatever middle-aged guys do.”

 

“Like you would ever have the patience for golf.”

 

Both Roxas and Axel turned towards the door, waving a lazy good morning to Xion, who had emerged from the bathroom, rubbing a towel trough wet hair.

“Are you two ready for the beach,” she asked, grabbing some toast herself, before smearing an ungodly amount of peanut butter ontop of it.

 

“Just asked the same thing, heard they started selling sea salt flavour at the ice cream shop there now, so won’t have to settle for boring ‘cream this time,” stuffing the rest of his toast into his mouth, Axel brushed some crumbs off of his hands and got up. “I’m just gonna go grab my shit from my room.”

 

“Don’t forget the sunscreen.”

 

“Yeah, don’t want to match your hair again, do you?”

 

“Ah, shut up, both of you.”

 

\------

  
  


Isa had started joining the three of them only recently.

It had been...strange at first. Axel used the first chance he got to spend time with his lost and found again friend, trying to reconnect what had broken between them. It hasn’t been anybody's fault, really. Isa had been too cold, too proud to admit that he wanted Axel’s company, even when both of them had no hearts of feelings anymore. Axel had been too blind, too ignorant to notice that he was pushing one of his friends away. 

But they managed to start again, push past the years of jealousy and ignorance and go back to teasing each other, to just being

And after a while, Isa had just become a fourth person in the flat, even with his own key, all of them watching terrible movies or playing cheap boardgames together, sometimes going outside to the bell tower, the beach, the weird little park where a rather rough and unfriendly man sold the best, roasted peanuts. Sometimes it was four of them, sometimes only three, sometimes just two.

 

This time it was all four, all of them walking the small distance from the train station to the beach, Axel and Roxas already kicking off their shoes to bury their feet in the sand as fast as possible, Xion rolling their eyes as she watched them stumble and Isa carrying a bag with towels and sunscreen, because he knew Axel for long enough to know that he would have to be the one to bring them after all.

 

They threw their blankets on the sand, changing into the swimwear they all had already been wearing beneath their clothes. It took all of the other three to wrestle Axel to the ground and force him to actually use the sunscreen, Isa even pinning Axel’s arms behind the latter's back and holding him pinned on top of one of the towels, while Roxa’s poured way too much sunscreen on Axel’s back and Xion practically rolled on the ground from laughter.

 

“All three of you are fuckin’ traitors”, Axel grumbled as he got up again, keeping his arms as far from his body as he could as he curled his upper lip at the sticky sensation all over his body. God, he really hated sunscreen.

 

“Don’t be such a moron, you get sunburned on less sunny days, and you know it,” Isa said, the slight smirk on his face betraying his harsh words. 

 

They played frisbee, turning it into a game of ‘who will hit the others in the face the most’, which Xion won, like always, grinning with a devilish smirk as she watched the other’s rub their noses and cheeks.

They got slices of watermelon, trying not to get sand on them as they lazed around on the warm beach, talking about this and that, things at school, things at work, movies and shows that are on TV, the fair that would soon come to town.

 

Some time later, Axel found himself floating on his back in the water, hearing Xion and Roxas shout and squeal as they splashed each other, seeing Isa standing with his feet in the water, his gaze soft as he looked at the faraway horizon, and he knew. 

 

He knew that things weren’t perfect. He knew that he would get into more fights with the two kids. That he would not always see eye to eye with his old friend. That he wouldn’t forget the things he went through, none of them would, for as long as they lived. That they would have to scrape by with what little he could earn for a while and maybe even longer. That things were new and exciting, but also terrifying and confusing. And also always tinted with something bittersweet, because it would remind him for a long time of all the time he had missed, all the time he had not thought there would be a future or not one filled with so many things like this one was.

 

But he also knew that things were ok, that they were alright, they were normal, they were fine. And honestly, that was really everything he could have hoped for.

**Author's Note:**

> I hoped with my entire heart that Axel would get Roxas and Xion back, and KH3 gave me not only that, but also Isa as a bonus and I'm just crying.


End file.
